Tag: game ideas

John commented on my HamChess post, and I was responding with another comment, and I realized that I was getting too big for just a comment, so decided on a new post.

The topic is “How balanced is the matchup between goblinoids and undead in the HamQuest universe?” (Egad! HamQuest has a “universe”!)

There is a rough equivalence of skeletons to goblins, zombies to orks, fimir to mummies, gargoyles to ghouls, and summoner to necromancer, but they aren’t identical. there would need to be a balancing factor undoubtedly, as the stats don’t quite match up.

So, I’ve been working on writing my Seven Basic Elements articles. I’m currently on “The Board” and it isn’t even close to ready for prime time. As with most of the times I’ve examined boards and how they fit in with a tile based rendering engine, I pick a well-known board game, and analyze what it takes (in a sophomoric way) to represent the game state adequately enough to feed it into a renderer client.

And in the process of this, I keep thinking of a HamQuest related game idea: HamChess.

Of course, it wouldn’t really be chess. It would be a board with two sides worth of monsters on it, and the HamQuest combat rules (i.e. the HeroQuest combat rules) would apply, but I think I would modify it slightly so that any fight was both a strike and counter-strike, because otherwise the first attacker gets too much of an advantage.

I’ve even got the factions decided: the goblinoids (goblins, orks, fimirs,gargoyles, and the summoner) versus the undead (skeletons, zombies, mummies, ghouls, and the necromancer). There would be no separate concept of king and queen, and the goal would be to completely eliminate the opponent.

First, movement will not be like as in chess. Pieces can freely move in any cardinal direction, and it is not yet decided whether or not some pieces will more more than one square on a move or not.

Pawns I replace with goblins and skeletons, respectively. The rooks are gargoyles and ghouls, and only two of each, and in the rook corner. Knights are fimir and mummies, and four of each. Bishops are orks and zombies, and six of each. The summoner and necromancer stand in the middle of the back row.

This makes for a back row that is 13 squares wide, so if I made the height of the field 13 squares as well, I would be at exactly the size of a room in HamQuest with walls all around.

I’d probably also want to find some way of incorporating items and keys, for example: have each of the main units carry a key that opens a door behind them, and going through the door is worth some score or something.